San Antonio Express-News

Power outages unbalanced

Why some faced longer blackouts in storm than others is a lingering question

- By Paul Takahashi

Kay Swint went without power for 53 hours during last month’s winter storm, forcing the retired nursing director to crank up her gas fireplace, layer on two pairs of socks and go to bed in her son’s sleeping bag to stay warm.

As the polar vortex plunged Houston into frigid darkness, the temperatur­e inside Swint’s 1957 Houston home fell to 43 degrees, bursting six pipes in her attic and saddling the 69-year-old retiree with a $2,500 repair bill.

Across town, Deep Datta lost power in his apartment just once, for all of three hours. When the power and heat went out Feb. 17, the 27-yearold environmen­tal engineer said he put on a jacket when it got a little chilly inside.

“I know for some people, it was more of a life-threatenin­g situation,” Datta said. “For me, it wasn’t as bad. It was kind of an inconvenie­nce. I was fairly comfortabl­e the whole week.”

The starkly different experience­s of Swint and Datta highlight a critical question still lingering from the recent power crisis: Why didn’t rotating outages rotate? The rolling blackouts ordered by the Electric Reliabilit­y Council of Texas to stabilize the power grid were supposed to last no more than 45 minutes and be spread equally among customers, but some Texans were without electricit­y for three days, ERCOT said, while others never lost power.

The inability or failure to rotate power outages equitably meant the effects of the ice, snow and frigid temperatur­es were not shared equally — to devastatin­g effect.

Dozens of Texans died during hours-long blackouts, including an 11-yearold boy in Conroe and a 95-year-old man in Houston who were found dead in their freezing homes. In Sugar Land, three children and their grandmothe­r trying to keep warm by their fireplace died in a house fire.

In Galveston, a 75-yearold veteran, down to his last oxygen bottle after his electric-powered oxygen tank inside his house ran out, went to his truck to get the bottle and died in the cold. Hundreds of Texans were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after resorting to running cars, portable generators, gas stoves and barbecue grills inside their homes and garages.

Homes, schools and businesses across the state suffered billions of dollars in property damage from frozen and broken water pipes. Some insurance estimates forecast that the winter storm could be the costliest natural disaster in Texas history, possibly surpassing the $125 billion in damage from Hurricane Harvey.

Much of the human suffering and misery during the storm was caused by the inability or failure to rotate outages, suggested ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, whom the council’s board fired last week. The amount of power that utilities had to cut — known as shedding load — to offset the huge loss of electricit­y supplies was so great that the outages could not be rotated without risking the stability of the grid.

“When we had a lot of load shed, some customers were stuck in that load shed for the entire time,”

Magness told ERCOT board members recently. “That’s where so much of the harm and damage came from.”

Carrying the load

Centerpoin­t Energy, a regulated utility, owns transmissi­on lines and distribute­s power to homes, public buildings and businesses in the Houston area. The utility’s distributi­on charges account for half or more of electric bills; the balance is the cost of electricit­y sold by retailers such as Reliant, Griddy or Discount Power.

Centerpoin­t said it began preparing for the extreme weather Thursday, Feb. 11, three days before the storm hit. ERCOT forecast that electricit­y demand would hit a record of about 75,000 megawatts, nearly 14 percent higher than the previous winter peak of 65,915 megawatts set in January 2018.

Supply and demand

must stay balanced on the grid, or else it can collapse, knocking out power everywhere. ERCOT on Feb. 13 said it expected up to a 7,500-megawatt shortfall in electricit­y supplies during the storm, warning utilities that rotating power outages could be necessary.

Centerpoin­t is responsibl­e for shedding about 25 percent of the excess load on the grid when electricit­y demand exceeds power generation. Only Oncor Electric Delivery in Dallas is responsibl­e for a larger share, about 36 percent.

With temperatur­es plunging and power plants struggling to keep up with surging demand, ERCOT began to mandate rotating outages in the early morning of Feb. 15. By sunrise that day, ERCOT had ordered 16,500 megawatts to be shed by utilities across the state, representi­ng more than one-third of the average load on the grid in

2020. Centerpoin­t was responsibl­e for shedding 4,100 megawatts in the Houston area.

The orders to cut power came so rapidly, Centerpoin­t said, that it could not rotate customer outages automatica­lly.

“The amount of power available from power generation companies was significan­tly reduced in a short amount of time,” a spokeswoma­n said, “preventing outages from being safely rotated without risking the integrity of the grid.”

Dark freeze

Centerpoin­t activated its Incident Command Center, which it would operate 24 hours a day for the entire week. The company deployed 2,500 employees and contractor­s on 16-hour shifts to handle calls and restore power to customers.

The utility said it reached out to industrial and commercial customers, requesting them to conserve as much power as possible. At the same time, the company said, it isolated circuits to maintain power for the Texas Medical Center, other hospitals and critical services such as water, sewer and emergency response.

Centerpoin­t said it sent crews to neighborho­ods and began manually rotating power around midday Feb. 15 in an effort to spread outages while preserving the safety and stability of the grid .

By that evening, ERCOT ordered 20,000 megawatts of power to be shed across Texas, including about 4,950 megawatts in the Houston area. More than 1.4 million Centerpoin­t customers would be without power for an additional 24 hours until crews were able to restore power gradually. Nearly all customers had power by Saturday, Feb. 20.

Outage equity

Centerpoin­t said it received 59 orders from ERCOT to cut power, and it complied to the best of its ability and as safely as possible. Some 89 percent of Centerpoin­t’s 2.7 million customer locations in the greater Houston area experience­d a power outage during the storm. Some customers had longer outages because of the power shortage, but others because of downed power lines and damaged equipment.

“We were focused on restoring power throughout our entire 5,000square-mile service territory as soon as power generation was available,” a Centerpoin­t spokeswoma­n said.

Colin Leyden, the Environmen­tal Defense Fund’s director of regulatory and legislativ­e affairs for energy, said he lost power in his Austin home around 2 a.m. Feb. 15 and went without power until around 1 a.m. three days later. Temperatur­es fell into the mid-40s inside his home.

“I would have done almost anything to get three to six hours of power to get our house warm,” Leyden said. “And I’m in a fortunate circumstan­ce. I can’t imagine what it was like for someone who didn’t have a car to warm up in or insulation in the walls. It was a nightmare for me, but it would have been pure hell for someone in that situation.”

In the aftermath of the power failure, the Environmen­tal Defense Fund issued policy recommenda­tions for Texas lawmakers, including for state regulators to investigat­e ways to rotate outages equitably when needed. Leyden said he recommends utilities install more circuits that can shut off downtown office towers without affecting nearby hospitals and government buildings. In addition, Leyden said Texas should require the installati­on of remote switches that would allow utilities to flip circuits on and off without having to send workers do so manually.

“I have to assume that rotating outages would have led to much less tragedy,” Leyden said. “Rolling blackouts are not ideal, but they save lives and they save property.”

Swint would know. After losing power, she turned on her natural gas fireplace to keep her husband, daughter, son-in-law and three grandsons warm. But it had been so long since her family used it, they forgot to open the flue venting the fumes out of the house.

It wasn’t until the house got hot a few hours later when it dawned on them that they were in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. They quickly opened the vents, and layered on more clothing to ride out the 53-hour blackout.

“We could have easily had an incident,” Swint said. “Luckily for us, we figured it out before it was too late.”

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 ?? Godofredo A. Vásquez / Staff photograph­er ?? The temperatur­e in Kay Swint’s Houston home fell to 43 degrees in last month’s winter storm, and six pipes inside burst; she lost power for 53 hours.
Godofredo A. Vásquez / Staff photograph­er The temperatur­e in Kay Swint’s Houston home fell to 43 degrees in last month’s winter storm, and six pipes inside burst; she lost power for 53 hours.
 ?? Getty Images file photo ?? The inability or failure to rotate power outages equitably in last month’s winter storm meant the effects of the storm were not shared equally.
Getty Images file photo The inability or failure to rotate power outages equitably in last month’s winter storm meant the effects of the storm were not shared equally.

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